It has been over two years since the Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc in the world and it will definitely be with us for quite some time into the future.

The pandemic has resulted in immense pressure on health professionals especially nurses in both their personal and professional lives.

Nursing is an art and science that involves working with individuals, families and communities to promote the wellbeing of one’s body, mind and spirit.

During this pandemic, nurses have had to take up different roles and responsibilities as front-liners getting involved in continuing care at the hospital for patients.

In this global pandemic, the country needs strong nursing enrollment in clinical management, awareness and knowledge for patients’ safety based on protocols and guidelines.

Nurses at Mediciti have always ensured that all patients acquire personalized high-quality services irrespective of their infectious disease condition.

These nurses are “The Medicitian Nurses” who care for patients as their own family members. We at Mediciti are attentive to patients’ physical and emotional needs, satisfaction, diet, treatment and administering drugs with proper communication.

Kudos to all nurses and the whole management team at Nepal Mediciti Hospital who are “HEROES” having overcome the challenges and still continue to ensure quality patient care and treatment.

In early 2021, the third wave (the pandemic) exploded around the world. Love, death, fear, guilt, pride, hope, friendship and sorrow was all around making the air heavy.

Through these all, “Medicitian Nurses” kept showing up to work as front-liners to ensure patient’s treatment and recovery while disregarding the risks, workload and stress they faced.

The intensive care units were unrecognizable with large numbers of very sick patients. Despite this, “Medicitian Nurses” continued delivering the best care and fulfilling every patient’s needs and requirements; including those of general patients while strictly adhering to hospital guidelines/ protocols.

Nurses at Mediciti always wore personal protective equipment, at times for more than six hours, without care for basic necessities.

Despite these challenges, we were satisfied with fulfilling our duties and see it as a blessing to serve our patients with the greatest of joy being when patients thank us after being discharged.

These hard times have molded the Medicitian nurses into being more enduring, caregiving, loving, and empathetic individuals both at the workplace and in everyday life.

We, nurses, held patients’ hands, we feed them, we wiped their tears as we wiped as our own and we prayed for them forgetting about our own life and risking it by being exposed to the risk of Covid during the process of treatment.

Medicitian Nurses hold a vital function as one of the most distinguished nursing service teams in the country delivering care of patients not only for in-patient department (IPD) but also in out-patient department (OPD), immunization program, emergency services and critical care services for 24 hrs, OT service, home care service and home PCR collection too during this pandemic.

Issues that nurses worldwide are facing day by day in this pandemic are challenging such as being overworked due to the critical shortage of nurses, limited/lack of medical supplies including personal protective equipment, psychological and mental stress, fear of infection, or self-exposure to Covid, among others.

More than 45% of Medicitian nurses have tested positive and isolated, but this did not stop the other remaining from covering the gap and providing the same quality care to covid or non-covid patients in the hospital.

Nurses in Mediciti, like elsewhere, are continually exposed to covid and they had to endure and stand by regulations to deal with a family’s grief, particularly, when a covid patient passes away and family members are restricted to receive the body to perform final rites as they usually would have. We, nurses at Mediciti feel the grief and are empathetic towards them.

Kudos to all nurses and the whole management team at Nepal Mediciti Hospital who are “HEROES” having overcome the challenges and still continue to ensure quality patient care and treatment.

“Medicitian Nurses are dedicated to our work and care of patients till our health, body and mind support.”

(Kopila Shrestha Palikhe is Chief of Nursing Services, Mediciti Hospital)